O3B experience ?

I believe they are launching in a few days only, and will take months , may be end 2014 for full implementation across all the continents.

Read more about O3B:

https://www.sspi.com.br/portal/images/stories/pdfs/vsat2012/O3b_SSPI_VSAT_DAY_Pr...

I suggest you download and save this.

Customer antennas: 1.2/2.2m for maritime mobile, 1.8, 2.4, 4.5, 7.3m at land sites.


Example pair of O3b tracking antennas.

All antennas in pairs for continuous 24 hr service; all tracking all the time and switch over as satellites set and rise. 4 - 8 - 16 satellites above the equator. Orbit period 287 minutes, height 8063 km.

Capacity up to 1.2 Gbytes per spot beam ( 600 Mbit/s up and 600 Mbit/s down )

See example O3b spot beams.

Remember that the satellites are circling the earth and sites need two spot beams aimed at the site, one from each of the current and next satellites prior to switchover.

Prices are not given, but I suspect that least cost coincides with use of the largest earth stations and 12 year lease period. One such dual antenna teleport per each capital city between +/-45 deg latitude sounds like a good objective, plus sites with smaller antennas, with lower bit rates, on remote Pacific islands, as illustrated.  Maritime mobile also looks promising. 

The key selling point is low latency due the shorter path length compared with GEO orbit.

Best regards, Eric.